“For myself, I want no advantage over my fellow man, and if he is weaker than I, all the more is it my duty to help him.” —Eugene V. Debs

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

disappointed with tonight's "Criminal Minds" for class and rape reasons

1. It turned into a "Be afraid of working class men" story. Yes, the set-up was more complex than that, but it boiled down to "Be afraid of valets."

2. Prentiss, on arresting the guy, hopes he'll be raped regularly in prison. Prison rape is a problem, not a solution. Yeah, that's an emotional response, not a reasoned one, but until now, Prentiss has seemed a little more enlightened than that. (And, yes, she would be creeped out by someone who preys on attractive brunettes. But the scene was still played as, "He will be punished in prison by being raped." Frankly, given the character, odds are good he'll be in prison looking for weaker inmates to rape. And given that humans are fallible, some of them will be innocent of the crimes they're convicted for.)

3 comments:

Yeah, I was wishing the UNSUB would turn out to be from the same class as the victim. But the killer's method of stalking his victims gave them a good opportunity to do a "Dear People, Don't let strangers have your home address. Love, the FBI" moment, which is one of the things I appreciate about Criminal Minds.

And I think we were supposed to be uncomfortable with, and disapproving of, Prentiss's outburst. I suspect we'll see more analysis of her response to this killer as we get further into the season. (Though I do think a TV episode has to hold up on its own; I could have used more immediate reaction from her teammates to better signal that Prentiss is crossing a line there.)

On prison rape on TV: I was pleased to see an episode of L&O:SVU the other day where (some spoilers here) a big part of the storyline was a former prisoner who had come back to try to kill one of the cops. Apparently when arresting him, she'd made some kind of prison rape comment, and when he was later raped in prison, he assumed she'd arranged it somehow. In a TV cop show kind of way I thought it was making a stab at showing that maybe you shouldn't joke about these things (although I guess the motive is not the most altruistic in this case...)

Emma, agreed that warning people about home protection is good, but the same point could've been made with an upper-class or middle-class predator.

Chuk, by TV standards, that sounds like a great episode. Yeah, the motive isn't altruistic, but I think anyone can understand being angry at someone who jokes about you being raped, whether it's before or after you are raped.